The upcoming Emraan Hashmi-starrer, Ek Thi Daayan, is based on a short story written by Mukul Sharma (father of actor Konkona Sen Sharma). At the behest of co-producer Vishal Bhardwaj, Sharma expanded the story into a bigger novel, which the latter used to write the film’s screenplay.

Now, the latest development is that the screenplay has now been written into a brand new novel, which has led to a lot of confusion as to who should get credit for it. Describing the confusion, Bhardwaj says, “First, it was a short story, which Mukul developed into a novel. Then, I used it to write the film’s script. Now, we have written a whole new novel using that script.”

The co-producer claims that since he and Sharma worked so closely on every stage of the development of the script as well as the novel, they have lost track of which parts should be credited to them individually. “The script as well as the novel bear both our names. Mukul has argued that if I don’t take credit for the novel, he won’t take credit for the script. It’s all very confusing,” laughs Bhardwaj.

The film, directed by Kannan Iyer, will release on April 18. it stars Emraan with three female leads — Konkona, Kalki Koechlin and Huma Qureshi.